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Sound Design Impacts User Experience and Attention in Serious Game

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Serious Games (JCSG 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 14309))

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Abstract

We study the impact of sound design – soundscape, sound effects, and auditory notifications, namely earcons – on the player’s experience of serious games. Three sound design versions for the game Venci’s Adventures have been developed: 1) no sound; 2) standard sound design, including soundscapes and sound effects; and 3) standard sound design with auditory notification (namely, earcons). Perceptual experiments were conducted to evaluate the most suitable attention retention earcons from a diverse collection of timbres, pitch, and melodic patterns, as well as the user experience of the different sound design versions assessed in pairs (1 vs. 2 and 2 vs. 3). Our results show that participants (\(n=23\)) perceive better user experience in terms of game playing competence, immersion, flow, challenge and affect, and enhanced attention retention when adopting standard sound design with the earcons.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    https://unity.com, last accessed on May 15, 2023.

  2. 2.

    https://freesound.org, last accessed on 15 May, 2023.

  3. 3.

    https://soundcloud.com, last accessed on 15 May, 2023.

  4. 4.

    https://www.reaper.fm, last accessed on May 2, 2023.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Zijing Cao, Eduardo Magalhães & Gilberto Bernardes

  2. INESC TEC, Campus da FEUP, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    Zijing Cao & Gilberto Bernardes

Authors
  1. Zijing Cao
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  2. Eduardo Magalhães
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  3. Gilberto Bernardes
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zijing Cao .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    Mads Haahr

  2. University of Costa Rica, San José, Costa Rica

    Alberto Rojas-Salazar

  3. TU Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Stefan Göbel

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© 2023 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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Cao, Z., Magalhães, E., Bernardes, G. (2023). Sound Design Impacts User Experience and Attention in Serious Game. In: Haahr, M., Rojas-Salazar, A., Göbel, S. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14309. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44751-8_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-031-44750-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-031-44751-8

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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